The health care industry struggles to manage a "data deluge" as doctors try to make sense of electronic health records and collect data for financial and risk management, according to an Oracle report.

IT managers aren't prepared to handle the
deluge of data in health care, Oracle revealed in its new report, "From Overload to Impact: An Industry Scorecard on Big Data
Business Challenges," released July 17.
More than three-fourths (77 percent) of
health care executives gave their organization a "C" or below for
managing the "data deluge," according to the report, which is based
on a poll of 333 U.S. and Canadian C-level executives from health care and 10
other industries. For all industries, 60 percent of the executives assigned
organizations a "C" or lower for managing the flood of data.

Following the Supreme
Court's June 28 decision to uphold the Patient Protection and Affordable
Care Act (ACA), known as "Obamacare," data volume will grow as
providers form accountable care organizations (ACOs), according to Marc
Perlman, global vice president of Oracle Healthcare.

"With the rise of [ACOs], a greater
focus on personalized medicine and the rollout of health care reform, data
volumes will continue to grow," Perlman said in a statement.
Companies such as Dell, IBM and Oracle
provide the IT infrastructure to store genomic data in the cloud used for drug
discovery. This data will allow doctors to develop personalized
medicine for patients.
"This report demonstrates the challenges
that health care organizations face in managing their rapidly growing information
stores and their approach to addressing this issue, including deploying
industry-specific and analytical applications that help them glean insight and
put timely information in the hands of line-of-business personnel when and
where they need it," Perlman's statement said.

Of health care executives interviewed, 0
percent gave their organizations an "A" for data
"preparedness," and only 8 percent of executives in all industries
gave their companies an "A" for this category.
Health care organizations are accumulating 85
percent more data than two years ago, according to the C-level health care
executives Oracle interviewed.
Of the data managed in all industries, 48
percent came from customer information, 34 percent from operations, and 33
percent from sales and marketing, according to the report.
Despite EHRs
being a top priority for health care organizations, they're struggling to make
use of the data from the health records, according to the survey.
Of health care organizations surveyed, 34
percent were able to capture data from EHRs to help patients while 43 percent
were unable to collect sufficient data to improve care.
The surge in big data also came from
management of doctor-patient relationships as well as financial and risk
management. Of respondents, 63 percent are looking to collect data in financial
management and 57 percent in risk management.
In addition, 93 percent of respondents from
all industries believed their organizations were losing revenue by not being
able to manage data.
"This study shows that up to 14 percent
of a companys revenue is lost because enterprises are challenged to manage and
analyze data, which grows exponentially as we speak,"
Oracle President Mark Hurd said in a statement. "Enterprises can get
ahead of the game by using these challenges as catalysts for companywide
strategic change."
According to the report, 87 percent of health
care organizations and 91 percent of financial firms were most likely to employ
software specific to their industry.
"Through industry-specific applications
and technologies, enterprises can transform data into measurable business
benefits," Hurd's statement said.

Brian T. Horowitz is a freelance technology and health writer as well as a copy editor. Brian has worked on the tech beat since 1996 and covered health care IT and rugged mobile computing for eWEEK since 2010. He has contributed to more than 20 publications, including Computer Shopper, Fast Company, FOXNews.com, More, NYSE Magazine, Parents, ScientificAmerican.com, USA Weekend and Womansday.com, as well as other consumer and trade publications. Brian holds a B.A. from Hofstra University in New York.